FAYETTEVILLE — For the first time as Arkansas’ head coach, Mike Anderson is trying to snap a four-game losing streak.
After a couple of close losses at home, the Razorbacks hit the road and were blown out by a pair of ranked team last week. Tennessee, now the No. 1 team in the country, beat them by 19 and then Ole Miss beat them by 17.
That last loss was particularly disappointing because star big man Daniel Gafford said he didn’t think like they played with much fight in the game. He also admitted their confidence is pretty low at the moment, but he believes they can get it back.
“Our confidence level is going to get back up, but we’ve just got to come out and play the basketball that we played at the beginning of the year,” Gafford said. “We need to play with the confidence level we had earlier in the year and not this basketball that we’ve been playing.”
Now in his eight season with the Razorbacks, Anderson is critical for the young team not to spin out of control. Although he hasn’t experienced it here, he has suffered four-game skids at previous stops with Missouri and UAB and each time they still managed to have winning seasons.
The key, he said, is not panicking. Instead, he is trying to be a steady force for his team.
“If they don’t see you panic, they’re going to be okay,” Anderson said. “What we do works, and we’ve seen that early on. Now we’ve just got to be able to put it together here. It’s nothing that some good winning wouldn’t take care of.”
Anderson and Gafford met with the media Monday afternoon to discuss those recent struggles, as well as preview the upcoming game against Missouri, which tips off at 8 p.m. Wednesday on the SEC Network.
Here are a few tidbits from the press conference…
~One of the biggest issues during the losing streak has been Arkansas’ defense, which is allowing a whopping 94.7 points over the last three games. “I think we’ve been trying to win just with offense and you can’t win just with offense in our league,” Anderson said. “You’ve got to give a defensive effort as well.”
